


you have every failure (you have every victory)

by selfishashell



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: F/F, Infidelity, Sibling Incest, Sister/Sister Incest, ft appearances by almost all of the s3 gang tbh, mentions of nicole/waverly as they exist in the show
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-30
Updated: 2019-12-30
Packaged: 2021-02-24 23:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22026280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selfishashell/pseuds/selfishashell
Summary: It’s a fact she has begun to hold close, a treasure she keeps beneath her pillow. It’s a fact she has nurtured over time, seed to sprout to redwood, its roots invulnerable. Wynonna chooses Waverly.or: it's been weeks since waverly was rescued from the garden. turns out there might be a little fallout. also, waverly knights wynonna and there are some giant evil ants.
Relationships: Waverly Earp/Wynonna Earp
Comments: 5
Kudos: 48





	you have every failure (you have every victory)

**Author's Note:**

> this ended up 5x longer than i intended, but here it is! it's weird, it's kind of a mess (although so are these kids), but it's (allegedly) done. somehow this is what happens when the concept of post-curse wynonna + fealty united in my brain. hopefully whatever it is, it's somewhat readable!!!
> 
> all warnings in tags, so make sure those are things you're down for, probably?

_Waverly is trapped._

_There’s a vine curling around her ankle; the branch around her stomach tightens. She hears Doc cry something out to her, but the urgency is sharper than the words themselves, until everything is very dull._

_The door is gone, and she has no options—the edges of the world quiet—she thinks wildly, a little hysterically, that it turns out her burial plot won’t matter—(and what happens to half-angel bodies, anyway—will she turn to dust? Half to dust?—and if half of her disintegrated, would it be a clean split, like half a ribcage, half a large intestine left behind?—Would it be her hair and toenails and ankles, measured in surface area?)—the world spins and spins and spins and—_

Her door opens with a thud, and Waverly starts, breath catching in her throat until she makes out the familiar figure. (Because Waverly’s back, she’s here, four walls and a roof and a sister who stood at the edge of the world and tore Waverly free, eyes wild like nothing she gave would be too much.)

“Wy—Wynonna? What are you—”

Wynonna’s lurching drunkenly to her knees in the darkness of Waverly’s room; Peacemaker shifts precariously in her grip, narrowly missing one of Waverly’s duvets in the process, and then narrowly missing Wynonna’s own leg, but by the time she’s kneeling on the ground in front of Waverly, everyone’s still miraculously unharmed.

“—doing?” Waverly finishes, as Wynonna—somehow achingly gently, in spite of the more-whiskey-than-blood-cells blood alcohol content—sets Peacemaker, feather light, across Waverly’s lap. It takes all the concentration she has in her; her brows are furrowed, her eyes narrowed, and only when she’s finished successfully does she say (too, too loud for the quiet of night, for the proximity between them), “And it’s three 10s from the judges for Wynonna Earp, who just so happens to be everybody’s favorite ten.”

“Is there a reason I’m holding Peacemaker at one in the morning?” Waverly asks, staring at the sword now draped across her legs. 

“Doc was being a total asshole,” Wynonna says. “Just, like, the biggest dick ever. The bad kind. Where it’s, like, how does anyone fit that thing inside them? Is trying even fucking worth it? Holy shit, did I ever tell you about that time when I was sixteen and—”

“Wynonna,” Waverly says, grabbing her arm, centering her. 

“Right, well, Mustachioed Asshole rolls up and goes—” At this, she adopts a low voice and accent that might have sounded a bit like Doc’s if it weren’t slurred to near incoherence. “—‘you’re not even the heir anymore, bitch, so why’re you here? Besides being super hot and awesome in bed.’” 

“That really doesn’t sound like Doc,” Waverly points out. 

“Okay, whatever, ‘Don’t you think it’s about time you found something to stand for, Wynonna?’” she tries, again affecting the same voice. “‘Also, you’re the best sex I’ve ever had, and _I’ve_ been around since that asteroid fucked those dinosaurs all the way up.’”

Waverly offers a mix between a sigh and a laugh, shaking her head. “Wynonna, I think it’s time to get you into bed. I’ll grab you some water—” 

But when she moves to stand, Wynonna lifts her hands. “Wait—no, Waves, I got a whole thing. No one’s putting Bill Pullman to sleep before he tells everyone not to die.”

“Should I be preparing for an alien invasion?” 

“Demons, humans, vampires, little green men in flying saucers—you hit ‘em hard enough with the right end of the sword and they get all the way dead,” she says. “Look, Waves, I don’t give a shit what he thinks—”

“Since when?” Waverly interrupts skeptically.

Wynonna grabs Waverly’s hand and presses it to her chest. “Me, Bill Pullman.” She touches both of their hands to Waverly’s chest. “You, the audience who let him get to his applause line.”

When silence has settled, when Waverly is looking at her expectantly, pointedly, Wynonna continues: “Listen, okay—I’ve had a lot of assholes try to tell me what’s right for me. I mean, like, a lot. Sometimes it’s a little side of electric shock therapy, or—or slicing my whole body open for a way casual organ inspection, or maybe demanding a promise to hit the road and keep the hell away from my little sister to give her a shot at—sanity, or being a whole fucking human being. But—I’m done giving a shit. There’s no curse. There’s no _destiny_. Peacemaker’s got a hilt and the innuendos are so obvious now it’s almost not even fun anymore. Anyone can make a sword joke.”

“You made about thirty yesterday.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t my _calling_. I’ve still got artistic principles. It’s all about thinking outside the…box.” At which point she tries for a wink, although with her coordination as it currently stands it looks more like she’s blinking aggressively.

“I did like the one yesterday, with the—the one about the plunging—” Waverly says, thoughtfully. “That one had, like, a _triple_ meaning.”

“I know, right?” Wynonna says, preening. “Hel _lo_ , genius. What do SAT scores know, anyway?”

“So any reason in particular I’m holding your massive sword right now, then?” She pauses, adds, “Right, okay. I see what you mean.”

“I don’t need a curse to stand for. I don’t _want_ a curse. You’re the thing I stand for.”

“Oh,” Waverly says.

“This is what happens with knighting, right? Wait, I saw Helen Mirren do it once. I just—swear all my life and loyalty and sword to you, and then you tap me on the shoulder three times. Or…that might be Dorothy. There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”

“Wynonna, you need sleep,” Waverly says.

“Waverly,” Wynonna says. “Just knight me.” This time, there’s something in her eyes—serious and sharp and just this side of desperate, and she’s doing that thing where she swallows around all the words that mean too much to say.

(Or maybe, she thinks, because Wynonna hasn’t stopped holding her gaze, hasn’t laughed away the earnest, breathtaking openness she finds there, it’s something else—that they’d be diluted in the telling. That they wouldn’t mean enough.)

It’s the least drunk she’s looked since she stumbled into Waverly’s bedroom. It’s the reason that Waverly finally lifts the sword from her lap. “I think it’s just a little bit of this,” she says, settling it once on Wynonna’s left shoulder and once on her right. “Et voila. Knighted.”

“That’s it?” Wynonna says. “No magic words?”

“Well, we’re not exactly set up for an official ceremony,” Waverly points out. “And unless you want to memorize lines you would’ve had to deliver in medieval Europe when you couldn’t even be bothered with one Shakespearean soliloquy—” 

“I was sixteen.”

“I was ten,” Waverly says. 

“ _Exactly_ ,” Wynonna grumbles. “Goddamn angel-nerd genes. Too smart for any of us.”

Waverly can see her fading, a little; her voice is softer, drifting, and she’s settled her chin firmly on Waverly’s lap.

“OK, I think I’m probably supposed to hand the sword back to you, but we’re putting Peacemaker away for the night,” Waverly says, resting it lightly on the bedside table, sharp edges out of reach of her very drunk sister, and running gentle fingers through Wynonna’s hair. 

“I mean it more than they did,” Wynonna murmurs into her lap. “They were some dumb assholes with cool armor who fought for rich assholes with sexy castles because it was what they were supposed to do.”

“I can’t give you a castle, Wynonna,” Waverly says, brushing the lingering strands of hair from Wynonna’s face. It’s absurd—and deeply unfair—that even on nights like this—nights where Wynonna barely stumbles through the door, lucky even to still be standing—that her hair still looks like it belongs in a photoshoot somewhere. 

Wynonna squints up at her. “I take it all back.”

Waverly just smiles. “No takebacks. You taught me that.”

When Wynonna’s crawled into bed beside her—after Waverly’s negotiated at least some sips of water out of her from the glass already on the beside table—she says, “You were good. In…’Hysteria Over Fuck All.’ You were better than everybody else. It all kind of made sense from you.”

“ _Much Ado About Nothing_ ,” Waverly says. And then, “You came.” She remembers spotting her in the audience, a vision she hadn’t dared hoped to find; she remembers stumbling through her next three lines like a miracle.

And she remembers searching for her afterwards, remembers the unbearable heaviness of that disappointment: gone again, a whisper so quiet it might not have ever been there at all.

“You deserve better, baby girl,” Wynonna says, like she knows what Waverly’s thinking. Like they’re thinking it together. “It just took me a long-ass time to get that that doesn’t matter.”

Waverly thinks about this: Wynonna, barely a teenager, turning every corner to find someone telling her—proving to her—violently forcing upon her—that she’d been made wrong. 

Waverly thinks about this: Wynonna, vowing to leave town so the contagiousness of her ruin would not leech into her baby sister. 

Waverly thinks about this: Wynonna, swinging wildly at the door that had contained Waverly for weeks and weeks and weeks. Wynonna, eyes wild, nothing to lose. Wynonna, rushing to meet her, enveloping her, shaking and shaking and shaking, whispering her name again and again into incoherence like the beginning of a promise. 

“You’re here,” Waverly says, and Wynonna nuzzles into Waverly’s neck, stretches an arm across her middle. Says, “’Night, Your Majesty.”

Before two months ago, they hadn’t slept like this since almost longer than Waverly could remember. Since they were children sharing scary stories in the dark, when Willa would frighten Waverly into nightmares with a knowing grin and Wynonna would hold her tight and whisper soft assurances that Waverly would be safe, that the monsters couldn’t reach her, that Wynonna would never let them.

(It was all a lie, of course. The monsters were worse than Willa could name, and they had come for Waverly in ways her four-year-old brain could never have devised. 

But it was a little bit true, too: Wynonna has clawed her way through hell and cracked open her heart and stared down the face of death to keep Waverly safe. 

And Waverly—she isn’t four years old anymore, and her heart is ferocious with the Earp—or Gibson—or angel—blood that runs through her veins.)

Since Waverly’s come back, Wynonna curls up in Waverly’s bed nearly every night Nicole isn’t there. (And only a few times, by drunken error, when she was, which Waverly’s decided to count as a win, as far as odds go.) Sometimes, Waverly thinks that Wynonna’s only sure Waverly won’t disappear if she’s touching her—a hand twined with her own, an arm around her shoulders, fingertips pressed to the small of her back, their feet sliding together beneath the warmth of Waverly’s many blankets.

Wynonna has not been sparse with physical affection—not with Waverly—for a long time, but Waverly can feel the shift, like an anchor for a boat constantly on the verge of drifting away. A storm always just on the horizon.

Sometimes, when all Waverly can see behind her eyes is a prison bound to her by blood, a Garden nearly as lush as violent, she thinks maybe Wynonna isn’t wrong. One blink and she could be lost forever.

Wynonna, an anchor – in a world of demons and vampires and dragons, this might be the strangest thing of all. 

But it’s Waverly who wakes one night to find the bed empty beside her.

It’s cold—that’s what she notices first. (She’s huddled underneath four blankets—her bonus blanket is at the foot of the bed—but she hasn’t slept alone for weeks, and that emptiness invites the chill underneath her skin, where it buries inside of her chest.)

“Wynonna?” she whispers into the dark, but one look at the bedside table reveals Peacemaker’s absence; even when she peers hopefully out into the barn, she can feel the wrongness crawling up the back of her throat, sharp and stinging.

She’s still calling Wynonna’s phone when she shows up at the station.

“We’ll find her,” Nicole says. “We’ll find her. I promise. This is Wynonna we’re talking about. She could just as easily be passed out on top of a mechanical bull.”

Waverly lets herself be held, listens to Wynonna’s voicemail for the thirty-seventh time that night. “She’s not,” Waverly says, not just because the nausea curling at the bottom of her stomach feels like an answer all its own, but because Wynonna hasn’t returned—or left—after one a.m. in weeks. Not since Waverly’s come back.

(Every night, when she comes home, she opens Waverly’s bedroom door—

to shuffle forward, to crawl in beside her, to mumble something about how impossible it is that Waverly’s still so cold, when she must by now own all the blankets in all of Purgatory, think of all the fake vegan geese—

or to lean against the doorframe for several long moments that sometimes bleed into minutes, like she’s committing Waverly’s safety to memory, like she has to wait just long enough to be sure—

—and Waverly exhales at the first creak of the doorknob, finds the tendrils of deep sleep reach for her for the first time that night, like every night.)

“Come now,” Doc says, striding into view. “You know as well as I that ‘trouble’ is our lady’s _raison d’être_. She is far too stubborn to meet her end so quickly, at least.”

But he rests a gentle hand on her arm, and she can see the concern in the tightness of his shoulders, in the smile that never once touches his eyes. It’s the first time she remembers to breathe—when she finds the sharp sting of fear that matches her own.

Nicole loves Waverly; she cares about Wynonna—more than either she or Wynonna would admit to aloud, and certainly in ways that defy description—and Waverly knows she will go out of her way to find her, but it’s Waverly she loves. It’s Waverly whose safety she will choose. 

But Doc—Doc loves Wynonna, and even if sometimes it’s in all the wrong ways, _this_ is the right one: he will think of nothing but finding her until she is found. And Waverly needs nothing as much as she needs that.

It’s been two days—two sleepless, frantic days, days spent reading book after book, English and Latin and Spanish until it’s all a delirious mess of words she can barely understand—has to understand, because there’s desperation and fear itching beneath the surface of her skin (which isn’t just the rash that’s showed up on her forearm)—when Jeremy emerges from his lab.

“I found something!” he announces, breathless with excitement. “It’s the bugs! It’s totally the bugs.”

“Jeremy,” Nicole says, “maybe you should take a breather. You’ve been working hard, and I think we could all—”

“No,” Jeremy insists. “They have her. The bugs—actually, the ants, if I’m right.”

“So you’re saying we haven’t found her yet because we haven’t explored…Purgatory’s anthills?” Waverly says.

“Yes!” Jeremy says. “No. Kind of.” He gestures wildly around the room. “See?” When all he receives from the assembled group are a series of blank looks, he sighs, adds: “It’s the dead of winter, and we’ve had to kill half a colony of ants just today. And, Robin, didn’t you say you saw _dragonflies_ hanging around outside yesterday? Dragonflies! They should be spending the winter months beneath the ice, or at least on a warm southern migration.” 

“ _That’s_ where this came from,” Waverly murmurs, tracing the red mark on her arm—the bug bite.

“Bugs,” Nicole says. “Bugs are the reason Wynonna’s in danger. What, did she kill one too many mosquitoes?” 

“I think,” Jeremy says, glancing first at Waverly and then at Doc. “I think it’s the Garden. She never should have been allowed in. I think the Garden wants to hurt her back.”

“Hurt her back,” Waverly says, frowning. “If they wanted to hurt her, they would’ve taken…” She doesn’t say _me_ , but she knows it, abruptly and certainly, in a way she knows very few things; she sees Wynonna, wet eyes and trembling mouth and face cracked wide open, frankly honest for Waverly— _you’re the light_ —and she’s sure.

She doesn’t say _me_ , but everyone in the room nods like she doesn’t need to. Nicole reaches for her hand, and Waverly takes it.

“It’s me,” Waverly murmurs, and then clarifies, meeting Doc’s gaze. “It’s _us_. We were never supposed to leave. They want to hurt _us_. They’ve taken Wynonna because she’s the person we both—”

“Well, shit,” Doc says. 

“We’re close,” Jeremy says, handing two cans of bug spray to each of them. It’s completely absurd; Waverly would laugh about it if her sister weren’t on the verge of being decapitated by giant, man-eating bugs.

(Oh, yes. Jeremy had taken awhile to get to the minor fact that they were people-sized bugs. That had been a fun revelation.)

“Will this work?” Nicole asks, staring skeptically at the can.

Waverly doesn’t wait for an answer; she follows Doc as he leads the way through the trees, past a clearing, and that’s when she begins to hear it. The _chittering_. Like cricket noises gone horribly, horribly wrong. 

“Can’t it ever be unicorns?” she mumbles. “How about a nice pegasus? I’d take a few hamsters. Bug proportions were not made for human sizes.”

“I do not believe a human-sized hamster would have half the appeal you think it might,” Doc points out; Waverly’s response is cut off when he gently covers her mouth, pressing them both backwards into a tree. There’s something rustling—something moving—

Honestly, Waverly’s not even sure you can count that as _human sized_ ; this thing—this ant?—is only human sized if the tallest human in recorded history were considered average. Its eyes are about the size of Waverly’s entire face, and all Waverly can do is stand absolutely still and hope that its sense of smell has not experienced the same exponential increase as the rest of its body.

And then there’s a sudden, sharp sound in the distance, and the thing moves away; Waverly finds the intensity of her relief only dulled by the fear that it might have been their friends, trailing them, moving into flanking position, that they might be at risk—

But she can’t think about it—now is one issue at a time; now is compartmentalizing—which becomes much easier when they turn the corner to find Wynonna, slung between two of the creatures as they…rest? Maybe? Whatever they’re doing, they’re not moving.

But Wynonna—Wynonna is awake.

Wynonna, with dried blood caked down the side of her face, and her jacket torn all the way down the side, meets her gaze, and mouths a single word— _Waverly_.

It takes several more moments to decipher her next gestures, which look like someone very drunk—and very bound—trying to swing a bat, but eventually she realizes Wynonna is pointing her toward Peacemaker.

Unfortunately, it’s in the second that she grabs the hilt that the two creatures jerk upright, looking straight at her.

“I usually take the bugs I find in our house outside?” she tells them, hopefully, trying for a smile.

No dice—the thing lunges for her, seemingly unconcerned with her historical treatment of insects. “So much for the vegan card,” Wynonna calls, scrambling with her bindings; she hears Doc fire a shot beside her (to little effect), lifts Peacemaker uncertainly into her hands. “Watch out for the spit!” she adds. 

It’s a hair too late; she watches Doc fall to his knees, frozen by what is, apparently, some sort of paralytic venom. Again, she thinks: where are the unicorns?

“Okay, baby girl,” Wynonna says. “You’ve got this. You just gotta get a good grip on that sword—nice and firm. Really feel it.”

Waverly shoots Wynonna a look, barely ducking out of the way of the thing’s mandibles. She swings at its body with the sword, clumsy and uncertain, misses by several inches. “Maybe even spit into your palm,” Wynonna says, “I hear that helps with—”

“I don’t know why I never went to you for advice before my first—” The rest of the team has finally reached them; she watches Nicole approach, firing off another round. It stymies one of them briefly, but does little else. “— _swordfight_.”

“Because Champ didn’t deserve a good…duel,” Wynonna says, also glancing at Nicole; Waverly moves to help free her, but another one of the ant monstrosities appear in front of her, hissing, and she just dodges out of the way of its saliva dose.

“You both realize I’m a grown woman, right? I don’t have any issues with the—” She rolls her eyes. “— _swords_ Waverly might have handled.”

“Purgatory had enough funding for a fencing class?” Jeremy says, launching bug spray at an ant’s eyes.

“Waverly!” Wynonna cries out, warning her just in time; a hair’s breadth to the right and she would have found herself immobile. “Peacemaker! Come on, you know her. You trust her. You were there—you’re sworn to her. You’re hers. Besides, if you had any brain in that long, sexy shaft at all, you’d trust her a hell of a lot more than you trust me.”

Waverly’s not sure if it’s about her growing comfort with its weight, or if it’s about Wynonna’s sheer force of will, or if it’s about the way Wynonna’s looking at her—like her whole life is in Waverly’s hands, and she’s sure about it—but the sword warms in her fist, begins to glow blue. And it’s—it’s almost like it’s vibrating, like her whole body is humming with the force of it, so when she next swings it the aim is perfectly true.

It doesn’t just connect; it’s a clean cut, right through the thing’s head.

She doesn’t stop. It’s not like she’s gone, or like she has no control anymore. It’s not like Mictian. It’s like there’s something guiding her hand, something that thrums beneath her skin, something steadying. The rest becomes a reflex—intuitive and just a little heady—and by the time she’s finished she’s standing, breathless in the middle of the forest, surrounded by more dead creatures than she fully remembers being there at all.

But— “Wynonna?” she shouts, looking around frantically. Wynonna’s gone.

There’s a scuffle beside her; Doc’s recovered enough that he and Nicole are together grappling one of the ant monsters. Jeremy’s dragging a paralyzed Robin out of their line of fire, shooting bug spray wildly as a kind of cover for them.

“Back the way we came,” Nicole has just enough time to say, and Waverly’s running before she even remembers thinking to move, stumbling through the forest—

There are tracks—weird, monstrous tracks, and tracks like a body being dragged, unconscious, like—

Waverly’s not even sure if she’s following them or if it’s Peacemaker that knows the way; all she knows is that she’s warm, warmer than she should be in this chill, and she doesn’t need to pause once—

“No!” Waverly shouts, when they come into view: three of the things, bent over Wynonna, chittering and chittering and—

“You can’t have her,” she says, swinging Peacemaker; one lurches forward as if to grab her, and she stabs it, then the next.

By the time they’re incapacitated, she’s already dropped Peacemaker; she’s falling to the ground beside Wynonna, checking frantically for any sign that she’s still—that her heart—

And it’s there. It’s there: soft and fragile and there. She leans her head against Wynonna’s chest, listening for every single uneven beat. “Wynonna,” she whispers. “We have to get you out of here.”

She’s too distracted. It’s why she doesn’t hear the rustle. It’s why the crunch of snow doesn’t register.

By the time she sees the creature towering above her, everything is already going black.

_Waverly,_ says a voice. _Waverly, daughter of Julian. You do not belong here._

Waverly blinks awake; it’s too dark for her to be sure where she is, but not too dark to see that one of the creatures stands before her. This one’s different from the others—at least twice their size. The queen, she realizes. The queen, and also _speaking inside of her head_.

“What about you?” she asks. “The giant-sized ant population isn’t huge in Purgatory.”

 _We will be gone soon,_ says the voice. _We are simply here to complete our mission._

“What mission is that?” Waverly asks.

 _You must return,_ the creature says. _You must come home._

“I am home,” she says. And then, “Where’s Wynonna? Is she okay? Is she—”

_Right now, she is alive._

“I don’t understand,” Waverly says. “Why take her, if all you wanted was me anyway? You could have taken me.”

_We will make a trade. Her life for yours._

“You can’t take me back against my will,” Waverly says, realization dawning. “I have to agree.”

 _It is your choice,_ concedes the voice. _Your life for hers._

“Is that really the going definition of ‘consent’ in the garden? You know if you need to throw in that much coercion, it’s not exactly free will.”

 _Your life?_ repeats the voice. _Or hers?_

Waverly swallows. There is only so much time she can spend delaying, and the longer Wynonna goes without some kind of medical help—if they’re really keeping her on the precipice of death—

“Wynonna stays alive,” she says. “Wynonna stays safe, and alive.”

Maybe, she thinks, it’s not such a bad thing, to be the one laying her life down for Wynonna’s, this time. There’s no one here to tell her she can’t. And isn’t this the thing she’s sought her whole life—the call of a hero?

She can hardly refuse now.

_Wynonna Earp lives._

“Yes,” Waverly says. “Okay. Just one thing—is there a Garden comment form, because I’d really like to suggest unicorns as the messengers next time. No offense or anything, I just think it might make a different kind of impression, you know?”

The creature simply stands over her as she babbles; she tries very hard to breathe, closes her eyes as it reaches toward her, a breath away—

“Hey,” Wynonna says, swinging Peacemaker right through the queen’s head, “somebody call pest control?”

“Wynonna,” Waverly says, and she doesn’t realize she’s crying until Wynonna’s kneeling beside her, wiping tears from her face. “I thought maybe you’d—I thought they might—”

“Like I could have ‘brought down by murderous ants’ in my obit,” Wynonna says, but she wraps her arms around Waverly, pulls her close. “Some more Garden bullshit, right?”

“Yeah,” Waverly says. “They came for me. Wynonna, there might be more. What if they keep sending things? What if they never stop?”

“Luckily,” Wynonna says, pulling back just enough to meet her gaze, one hand cupping Waverly’s cheek, “swords don’t run out of bullets.” A beat more, and she says, “You’re never going back there. Not ever. I will buy out the whole country’s bug spray inventory if that’s what it takes.”

“They think I belong there.”

“They’re wrong,” Wynonna says, simply. “You belong here. With the people who love you.” She pauses, adds, “That’s, like, the entire town, by the way. Honestly, I’m pretty sure even gas station Luke would lay down his life for you, if you asked him. He asked for you about seventy-eight times, when you were—” Wynonna can’t stop her voice from breaking, abruptly. “—‘on vacation,’” she finishes in a stage whisper, exaggerating the air quotes to distract from the way her lower lip is shaking, the tremble of her fingertips on the back of Waverly’s neck. “ _Everyone_ asked about you,” Wynonna says.

“Well, he was my first…swordfight,” Waverly says.

“No way,” Wynonna says. “Luke? With the…beard, and everything? Cat sweater Luke?”

“He didn’t have the beard in high school,” Waverly says, laughing a little hysterically through her tears. “Hey,” Waverly adds, before Wynonna can pursue this particular rabbit hole any further. “Peacemaker worked for me.”

“I did kind of promise it to you,” Wynonna says. “Like, ‘my weapon is yours, Your Majesty,’ or something?”

“I don’t know if that’s exactly binding,” Waverly says.

“I meant it,” Wynonna says, sharp with something almost like defiance, and this time she’s not drunk. This time she’s looking at Waverly with clear, clear eyes, swiping a gentle thumb across Waverly’s cheek, even though her tears have mostly dried up. “I still don’t know what I am, Waves, or what not having a curse makes me—but I know what I am with you.”

And Waverly is consumed by a single moment of utter selfishness. Waverly—who was left for years with hardly more than the ghost of what had once been a sister, who yearned for Wynonna’s return and resented her for disappearing and loved her, loved her, loved her most of all; whose dread, buried at the very heart of her optimism, told her that one day Wynonna would run, again, because that was who she was, because out there was something Waverly could not give her, surely, no matter what she said, or did, or tried—

Waverly, who does not trust anything in the world as much as she trusts this: Wynonna loves her more than she loves anyone. If Waverly asked, Wynonna would trade her life away for Waverly’s like just another breath. 

It’s a fact she has begun to hold close, a treasure she keeps beneath her pillow. It’s a fact she has nurtured over time, seed to sprout to redwood, its roots invulnerable. Wynonna chooses Waverly.

And Waverly is selfish, and stupid, and when she crosses what remains of the space between them, she wants only to know how it tastes: the certainty of the knowledge that Wynonna would do anything for her.

In the breath before she presses her mouth to Wynonna’s, she watches her eyes flutter gently shut.

It’s brief, fleeting; it’s the barest hint of a touch. “Shit,” Wynonna says. “You’re a tentacle again, aren’t you? What is it this time, an ant tentacle? A possessing mandible? Do we really have to go through this again, because I’ll have you know—”

Waverly—stupid, stupid, stupid—kisses her again, then abruptly clears her throat. Thinks about claiming demon possession. (Also wonders, briefly, if Purgatory law ought to be adjusted to account for that—not that Purgatory law accounts for much.) “I’m—no, I’m not—I just wanted to say—you know, thank you—like, ha—thank you for saving my life—” she presses a kiss to Wynonna’s cheek “—thank you for Peacemaker, which was, by the way, very cool—” to her forehead “—thank you for—”

She doesn’t know exactly how to say the next part without sounding like a complete narcissist—thank you for loving me _most_ —so she presses a kiss to the corner of Wynonna’s mouth, too close, and it’s then that she feels the shakiness of Wynonna’s exhale, and she can’t—she can’t help it—she thinks, with growing wonder, that maybe—that it’s possible—that maybe Wynonna _wants her_ —

And Waverly (selfish, selfish Waverly) has to know—what that would mean—what that would feel like—

When she kisses her again, it’s with the urgency of a girl who knows it’s one of the worst decisions she’s ever made; she fists her hands into the front of Wynonna’s jacket and kisses Wynonna’s mouth open and finally feels her respond, halting at first and then a hair shy of desperate, her thumb tracing patterns along Waverly’s neck, her fingers curling in Waverly’s hair and, oh God, Waverly thinks this might be unforgivable, but there’s warmth buzzing beneath her skin, like she’s holding Peacemaker again, and Waverly thinks Wynonna would take this context and turn that into a sword joke if she wasn’t—if they weren’t—

If Waverly hadn’t just made a sound like a whimper, and if Wynonna wasn’t suddenly kissing her like she wanted to swallow it whole—

Waverly remembers separating from Rosita only a handful of breaths after she kissed her, her mind a mess of anger and righteousness and uncertainty and just an edge of vindictiveness and—well, she shouldn’t undersell Rosita either, who really had been very attractive and very smart, and also, then, presumed very human—

And Waverly doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, that this moment is separated from that one by lifetimes—by universes—

By a girl, searching and searching and searching for Wynonna’s line in the sand, and coming up short. Like Waverly could ask any question, and Wynonna would answer it yes.

When they separate—only with little choice, because Waverly is breathless, her heart rattling so insistently inside her chest it feels impossible to contain—it’s Wynonna who says, with dark, dark eyes, “Fuck.”

“Maybe I am possessed,” Waverly says, a little bit frantic; her brain and body are finally starting to meet in the middle, and neither of them seems to know what to make of the things that have led her here. “Maybe you’re possessed. We’re probably both possessed. Ants have—pheromones, right? Especially queens. I mean, you know what they say—never trust a queen ant. They just can’t be relied on to not—um, convince you to make out with your sister. Ha! That’s—that’s what they say. I think it’s a proverb.”

“Peacemaker’s been kind of weird since you held it, too,” Wynonna says. “Really warm. Maybe it’s infected. Speaking of proverbs, you what they say about untested swords.”

“Ant STD, then,” Waverly says, giggling only because there’s nothing else she can think to do that doesn’t involve screaming—or the other thing, the thing she’s not thinking about—

“Avoid the scare,” Wynonna says. “Be aware.” She stands abruptly, reaching a hand out for Waverly. “Let’s get the hell out of the sex cave,” she says. “Your Majesty.”

When Waverly takes her hand, weaving their fingers together, aware of her heartbeat clattering inside her ribcage—her throat, her fingertips—she wonders how anything could ever be the same.


End file.
